---

A fierce, mordantly funny and perceptive book, from the author of Ship of Fools , about the act of national self-harm known as Brexit. A great democratic country tears itself apart, and indulges in the dangerous pleasures of national masochism.

A book about the delusions of Brexit, the threat it poses to economic prosperity, peace in Ireland and the tradition of British democracy.

---

´There will not be much political writing in this or any other year that is carried off with such style´ The Times .

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR.

´A quite brilliant dissection of the cultural roots of the Brexit narrative´ David Miliband.
´Hugely entertaining and engrossing´ Roddy Doyle.
´Best book about the English that I´ve read for ages´ Billy Bragg.
´A wildly entertaining but uncomfortable read ... Pitilessly brilliant´ Jonathan Coe.

In exploring the answers to the question: ´why did Britain vote leave?´, Fintan O´Toole finds himself discovering how trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions; how the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact has come to define the style of an entire political elite; how a country that once had colonies is redefining itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation; the strange gastronomic and political significance of prawn-flavoured crisps, and their role in the rise of Boris Johnson; the dreams of revolutionary deregulation and privatisation that drive Arron Banks, Nigel Farrage and Jacob Rees-Mogg; and the silent rise of English nationalism, the force that dare not speak its name.

He also discusses the fatal attraction of heroic failure, once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaster: the Charge of the Light Brigade, or Franklin lost in the Arctic. Now failure is no longer heroic - it is just failure, and its terrible costs will be paid by the most vulnerable of Brexit´s supporters, and by those who may suffer the consequences of a hard border in Ireland and the breakdown of a fragile peace.

---

´[O´Toole] is a sharp thinker and he makes many good points ... There is also a lot to learn from his incidental arguments. This is a literary book and I was delighted´ The Times .

---

O´Toole, Fintan
Fintan O´Toole is a historian, biographer, literary critic and political commentator. His acclaimed columns on Brexit for the Irish Times , the Guardian and the New York Review of Books have been awarded both the Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize. His books include A Traitor´s Kiss , his life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; Judging Shaw and White Savage . His investigative, polemical books have all been bestsellers.

---